Page 59 of Run Away Home: Tempered

“Are you serious, Peter?” she asks.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

“HOLD ON, DANNY!” I yell. “Yes. Just a second,” I say to Hayley.

“Fine!” She gets off of me, lays down on her back, and looks up at the ceiling. She exhales loudly and covers her face with her hands.

I stand up and walk to the door. I open it just enough to stick my face out. “What’s wrong? I thought you were sleeping?”

“I can’t sleep. You wanna watch something on Netflix?” Danny asks.

He tries to look past me to see what Hayley’s doing. I close the door even more so that he can only see half of my face.

“Are you feeling all right? It’s late.”

“Sort of...My stomach hurts, and my head hurts, and also my throat kinda hurts too.” He rubs his throat with his hand and coughs.

I stick my arm out of the door and put my hand on his forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”

“I didn’t say I felt like I had a fever. I just wanted to know if you wanted to watch TV with me. God!”

“Okay, okay. Yes. Let’s watch something. Just give me a minute. Go put something on.”

“If I still feel sick tomorrow, can I stay home? We can hang out. Maybe you can take a day off?”

“Maybe. We’ll see. Just go pick something to watch.”

“Okay!” He turns around and heads toward the living room. I close the door and look at Hayley.

“I really can’t believe you!” She turns away from me, covering her face with the blanket.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Whatever, Peter. Good night.”

“Later?”

“No, thanks. I’ll be sleeping.”

“I’m sorry!”

“I said good night!”

She reaches toward the nearby lamp and flicks it off. I’m standing in the dark now.

Chapter Ten

Peter

IPARK THE CAR ANDpick up my phone to scroll through the list I made earlier today.

“Let me see that.” Danny reaches over the center console and grabs my phone, scanning through the list. “Brussels sprouts? No!”

“You seem to be feeling much better. What a miraculous recovery.”

“Yeah, it’s weird. Guess it was just a twenty-four-hour thing.”

“More like a two-hour thing.”

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